ion of The Highlands, the
home of the Nourse family. In years gone by I remember that this
ivy-covered stone house was deemed inaccessible, as it was reached only
by private conveyance or stage coach. The first time I crossed its
threshold I could have readily imagined myself living in the colonial
period, as the furniture was entirely of that time. When I first knew
Mrs. Nourse, who was Miss Rebecca Morris of Philadelphia, the widow of
Charles Josephus Nourse, she was advanced in life, but notwithstanding
the infirmities of age, she had just acquired the art of china painting,
and was filling orders the proceeds of which she gave in aid of St.
Alban's which was then a country parish. I frequently passed a day at
this ancestral home, and I especially recall seeing a wonderful
Elizabethan clock in the hallway which I am told is still, in defiance
of time, striking the hours in the home of a descendant. Near The
Highlands is Rosedale, occupied for many years by the descendants of
General Uriah Forrest, who built it subsequent to 1782. He was the
intimate friend of General Washington, and its present occupant, Mrs.
Louisa Key Norton, daughter of John Green and widow of John Hatley
Norton of Richmond, is my authority for the statement that one day after
dining with her grandfather, General Forrest, Washington walked out upon
the portico and, lost in admiration of the beautiful view, exclaimed:
"There is the site of the Federal City." Mrs. Norton's sister, Miss
Alice Green, married Prince Angelo de Yturbide, and it was their son,
Prince Augustine de Yturbide, who was adopted by the Emperor Maximilian.

One of the pleasing local features connected with the Grant
administration, which at the time made no special impression upon me,
was the fact that there were then but few, if any, social cliques in
Washington, and that society-going people constituted practically one
large family. A stranger coming to the Capital at that time and properly
introduced was much more cordially received than now. Such, for example,
was the condition of affairs when Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Jeffrey came to
Washington to spend a winter. They rented the old Pleasanton house on
Twenty-first Street below F Street and entertained with true Southern
hospitality. The Jeffrey family was of Scotch extraction and Mrs.
Jeffrey was Miss Rosa Vertner of Kentucky, where she was favorably known
as a poetess. The first wife of Alexander Jeffrey was Miss Delia W.
Gra